In Wayne schools, special-needs students are on a technology track

Michael Brucato, 16, learning how to use an embroidery machine with special education teacher Michele Cornell.

WAYNE — In a Wayne Valley High School classroom, six pairs of hands unboxed, labeled and configured laptops to be used in classrooms throughout the school.

"We're going to Ctrl + D again," Suzanne Fioravanti, the Wayne school district's systems network administrator, told one of the students, trying to fix an error that came up while signing on to a computer. "It's going to take 15 minutes to redo."

Mounir Chidiak moved on to another computer, but kept that one by his side, worried that "If I just leave it, it's going to run out of battery," he said.

Chidiak is one of six Wayne Hills High students with special learning needs who are filling in as in-house tech experts, setting up computers in schools throughout the district.

Chidiak, an aspiring video-game designer, said, "I like working with technology, not just video games."

The students this week enrolled the computers, a multi-step process that then allows the district to control them all at once. The students also fixed laptop chargers to carts that wheel the computers around from classroom to classroom, engraved medals for a special-needs youth hockey team using a computer and sewed poppies to shirts with an industrial embroidery machine.

The students are part of the transition skills program, which trains students who are not usually college-bound for careers once they leave high school.

"This is fabulous to be able to put on the résumé," Chrissy Kindler, a transition teacher, said of the computer work.

The school district benefits, too.

"The hours that it takes for carts to be unboxed, tagged, labeled, enrolled, cart management — that's now being done by the transitional students," said Joe Borchard, the district's director of technology.

Three times a week, the students spend an hour setting up the computers and carts. Since March, the students have set up laptop carts at George Washington and Schuyler-Colfax middle schools, and Wayne Hills High School. This week, they finished a cart of 30 computers for Wayne Valley High School.

While working, they wear navy blue T-shirts emblazoned with "SWAT," indicating that they are "students who assist with technology." The T-shirts are meant to be like uniforms, instilling a professional mindset.

"It looks nice," said Michael Brucato, a 10th-grade student.

"What do you like about it?" asked Jessica Neu, the district's coordinator of student support services.

"It's for working," Brucato said.

Other students in the transition skills program — as part of their "structured learning experience," which offers students supervised work experience — are updating barcodes in the Wayne Public Library, bagging student lunches at Packanack Elementary School and greeting customers at Walgreens, said Jennifer Varano, a transition teacher.

Neu said "technology is very motivating" to some students, who might even work in the sector after graduating. "The job market out there is expanding so much for technology," she said. "We think this is a really innovative way in terms of getting our students ready for what's out in the world right now."

Ryan Strover, a Wayne Hills senior who was connecting a computer to the Internet, said an earlier job was to assemble pizza boxes at Tony's Touch of Italy II. He said he prefers the tech work.